After You by Jojo Moyes

After You by JoJo Moyes- 352 pages

Book Blurb:

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started. Her body heals, but Lou knows that she needs ato be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding-the paramedic whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future.

My Review: 3 stars

Click here to order on Amazon!

After You, the anxiously awaited sequel to Me Before You had a lot to live up to with it’s predecessor being one of 2013’s hottest titles.

For me, parting with the characters at the end of a book sometimes requires a mourning period, which was true of Me Before You. That my friends, is the beauty of fiction…when you can get so caught up in a book: it’s plot, place, people and perspective; that you are literally lost in the story. I cried my eyes out, grieved the character’s death and then moved on. So for me, a sequel wasn’t necessary, but of course if it’s there, I’ll read it.

So with that long-winded premise I’ll say this was a fine story. It was nice to revisit with Lou, the main protagonist, and live through the healing process, however there was still a lot of Will in the book, rather than this being Lou’s story.

Moyes has a way with words and makes very realistic and approachable characters that can suck you right into the story. The ending was left open for a third book, smart marketing move for the author, poor move for her fans who relished in the beauty of book one.

Quotes I liked:

I couldn’t believe that you could give birth to someone, love them, nurture them, and by their sixteenth year, claim that they so exasperated you that you’d change the locks of your house against them.”

-“The young are terrifying, I thought. They are without boundaries. They fear nothing.”

-“Depression, we had learned in the group, loves a vacuum. “

-We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. What we aim to do in our little group is that carrying them is not a burden, something that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift.”